Trepidation | Trepidation Trilogy | The Empty World Sequence

Two

TWO

The Library was to be found further from the old city, newer in construction, though still centuries old. In this part of the world, nothing was truly old unless it had stood more than a millennia. Here, Claudia went alone, assuring John she would be well while he went to the church. It seemed he had been close with this young priest, Krzysztof, and wanted to be with him.

Claudia entered the glass-fronted lobby, and passed through the lax security station, into the main of the library. It had been quite some time since she had wandered in one; she recalled those in Paris she had known well. In Berlin, there had been a nice Library. And, of course, Alexandria had one, but last she had been there Claudia had witnessed emergency surgery on one of the Lilim upon a reading table.

She would have to tell John the rest of the stories, he should know. He would feel better, in the end, if he knew how she and David had become close. She felt David in the back of her mind, and concentrated on shutting him out. It was best. He did not approve of her running off and if she allowed him knowledge of her location he might come for her. That would be no good.

There were few people here now, just as Maria had said. Claudia went straight to the library terminal. It was so much easier that having to dial in. they just left the terminals here, linked to the entire European library database for anyone to use. A few keystrokes and the display was in German. Did the local librarians know how easily a terminal's settings were altered? Maybe. It made no real difference. Claudia just liked knowing how her knowledge compared to those about her.

These terminals at the libraries throughout the European states were old fashioned in their stripped down two dimensional display, ancient actually in that they presented no more than twenty colors for either text or background. You couldn't find the like these days unless ordering a special programmer's terminal. In Paris Claudia had owned such a computer, but now relied on her fully-loaded mobile.

Lord, Claudia thought, Poland had been in a lot of wars, but then every European state had. there had been too many land wars across the continent. And, there were lists of books and census reports, articles from dailies and monthlies, all presenting information about the make-up of Poland's population and how such had changed over the years. They'd had emperors and queens and presidents here.

Saints. John was always going on about saints. And then another long list came up. Often these saints died young, after refusing to lead an army or denouncing their riches to help the poor. Elsewise, they were old monks or the like. Libraries were great for getting reading material. Naturally, they had hardcopies secreted away, but one could download scans of entire out-of-print books and keep them indefinitely on their own computer system.

Claudia pulled up a stool to the computer desk and as she sat took out her portable drives. A few keystrokes and the Library machine would download copies of the long list of books and articles she had selected. And it was fractionally faster than downloading over her mobile's link. Libraries were wonderful places.

It wasn't very crowded, and so Claudia slipped from her chair finally to the next terminal, selected in quick succession of keyed in commands another list of promising materials and slipped another memory device into place. And well, what was another machine tied up at this hour? The information was there to be taken.

Of course, it was rare anyone found need for such a volume of library material on such a range of subjects and had any inclination to store it all for use later. A few users looking for the latest sports scores or students with a history report might just find their requests denied for the next few hours. Oh, nothing so grand as tying up an entire government system, or anticipating the address of the airlines backup sever in order to keep them from finding a certain passenger in time. Even those had been rather childish pranks.